On a thousand-mile motorbike ride across the Himalayas in Ladakh, India, Geoff
Hill encounters snow, landslides, dust and astonishing scenery – as well as
local wise men to keep him on course.

It's not every day you go out for a motorbike ride and end up adopting a little girl. But then, this was no ordinary trip. It was a fortnight in the Himalayas, riding on 1,000 miles of the wildest and highest roads in the world, 400 of those on tracks of sand, mud, gravel, rocks, rivers and, once, snow.

Still, at least I knew who to blame: Peter Stilwell, a 26-year-old biology researcher from Totnes in Devon. He travelled in India seven years ago and fell in love with the country and the people. On his return home, he bought one of the Royal Enfields that have been made in Madras since the now-defunct British company set up a satellite factory there in 1949 to serve the Indian Army.

Peter saw the chance to combine his two loves when he insured his bike with Bennetts, a specialist in motorcycle cover, and discovered it ran a competition in which bikers were invited to write in and describe their ultimate adventure in the hope of winning it.

The next thing he knew, he and his childhood mate and fellow biker, Vince Stephens, were on a flight to Delhi. I joined them during their journey, organised by Blazing Trails, the bike adventure company run by Suzie Lumsden and her husband, Damon l'Anson, which Bennetts had chosen to make Peter's dream a reality.

"It's been quite surreal, really. It only began to feel real when we got on the plane to Delhi and then on to Ladakh," said Peter as we arrived at Leh, the starting point for the trip.

Leh is a seething mass of soldiers, refugees, carpet salesmen, pashmina traders, trinket hawkers, sacred cows, less sacred donkeys and more sacred monks. It's at an altitude of more than 10,000ft, so the moment you step off the plane you're in for headaches, giddiness and altitude sickness. Thankfully, we were given a day to get over those before the first ride, a gentle 90 miles on Tarmac during which we made extensive use of the most important button on any vehicle in India – the horn.

Heavens, it was so civilised that Peter was even wearing a well-pressed white shirt with cufflinks: the Raj may be long gone but a chap still has to set an example. All was going swimmingly until a landslide forced us to take a diversion along a mountainous farm track – steep hairpin bends of sand and rock with optimistic tractors coming the other way, that sort of thing.

As the sun sank behind the snowy peaks, we rolled wearily into the courtyard of a hotel in the mountain retreat of Lamayuru, in the shadow of a 1,000-year-old monastery that is home to 150 monks, some of whom looked as if they had been there from day one. The showers were cold, the beer was colder and the curry for dinner was hot, but we were so tired we couldn't have cared less which order they came in.

The next day, every few miles we seemed to pass another army barracks. India spends an estimated £4 million a week guarding these northern regions, which have been disputed by Pakistan ever since Partition in 1947, and which are now even more disputed thanks to the brooding presence of China in Tibet, to the north east.

They would do better to spend on the roads, I thought, as we bounced west along a route to Kargil. Decent stretches would tempt us coyly for a couple of miles, then disappear into a boulevard of broken dreams.

And yet, just as the heart sank at the appearance round a corner of yet another stretch of sand, gravel or mud, it would lift at the sight of a lush valley, bright with wild roses, or a group of children waiting for a school bus, or, once, a beautiful Buddhist nun spinning a prayer wheel.

By the afternoon, we were in the verdant Suru river valley, home to bears, wolves and snow leopards, although the only wildlife we saw were grazing yaks and plump marmots. We stopped to camp in the shadow of Rangdom, a monastery hamlet looking out over a valley that would have been a worthy setting for Lord of the Rings.

"Spectacular. Great ride. Knackered," was Peter's verdict on the day as he and Vince climbed off, covered in dust.

In the morning, we gazed in wonder at the vast Drang Drung glacier, then wound our way down at length through the Zanskar Valley. Its villages and hamlets, from the faces and clothing of the inhabitants to the Buddhist shrines, were pure Tibetan, yet the surrounding landscape, with its drystone walls, grassy fields, bubbling streams and white houses with thatched roofs, was disturbingly Irish.

We stopped for the night at Padum, a town with a frontier feel to its dusty streets. After a tour of the highlights, which took about 45 seconds, we went on a pub crawl, to both of them, then decamped to what the guidebook described as the least worst restaurant in town. I dined on mutton that had seen better days, and fell into bed.

Thankfully, in the morning we found not only the best macaroon shop in town but a café selling delicious samosas and momos, like tiny Cornish pasties. On the mountain beyond stood a trilogy of brightly painted Buddhist shrines, like those recycling bins you get at home; clean souls in the white one, dirty in the red, and the rest in the green for sorting out later.

Beyond that was the 11th-century mountain-top monastery of Stongdey, which we rode up to in the afternoon just in time to tiptoe into the courtyard and find the monks in fantastical robes and hats entertaining an audience of locals with dancing to the accompaniment of drums, cymbals and horns.

A junior lama wearing a plumed Victorian helmet bearing the words "Horse Artillery" kept order with a sword. A grizzled ancient dispensed rancid yak butter from a pouch and rosewater from a McDowell's rum bottle. From a raised dais, the rinpoche sucked on a boiled sweet and surveyed the scene with an expression either of infinite boredom or infinite serenity.

Afterwards, he invited us for tea and biscuits in his inner sanctum. Vince, who was covered in dust and mud after falling off earlier, plonked himself down beside the great man. "You know, Rinpoche, one minute I was doing fine, and then the next, splat!" he declared. The rinpoche nodded wisely, and the rest of us tried not to burst out laughing at Vince's endless enthusiasm.

But neither that, nor even the dancing, was the highlight of the day. No, that was Kunza Lomo, the sweet little six-year-old girl who grasped my hand and wouldn't let go all afternoon. "You know," said Suzie as we hugged her goodbye, "it would cost only £100 a year to pay for her education, and change her life."

"Consider it done," I said.

I thought of her much the next day as I rode back along the road to Kargil, a Muslim town. There, a polite request at our hotel as to the possibility of beer led to my jumping into a taxi with a local, followed by a breakneck ride across town, six whispered phone calls, three false alarms, and finally a secret drinking den down an alleyway.

Two minutes later, an unfeasibly large sum of money had changed hands, and I was scuttling back to the taxi carrying a hessian sack containing a dozen bottles of Godfather Extra Strong. They girded our loins the next day for the steep and sinuous climb to Khardung Pass, at 18,000ft loftier than Everest base camp and the highest motorable road in the world.

In the lilac dusk, we fell into the Shangri-La of Hunder, a village of bright temples and beautiful women cradled in an almost Tuscan landscape of mustard fields and poplars. Greeted by the friendly waves of homecoming workers and schoolchildren, we camped in an apricot wood by a ramshackle monastery, occupied by a solitary old man who was the spitting image of Yoda.

Just when we thought the road had thrown everything it had at us, next day the 16,000ft Wari Pass was snowbound. In July. Having slithered and pushed our way through that, we found the road blocked by a broken-down truck. The bikes could get past, but not the backup vehicle.

An hour of shovelling and rock shifting later, we were through, but it was now late in the day, and only the suicidal travel on Indian roads after dark.

"You know," said an exhausted Peter, "this trip has had so many highlights. But getting through that snow was both the biggest challenge and the biggest achievement. It's really inspired me. I'll be back, believe me."

We decamped to nearby Thiksey, and next morning struck out on the long ride to the last and most exotic stop of the trip: the fabled lake of Pangong Tso, straddling the border between Ladakh and Tibet. It was blessed by sky and cradled by mountains. I looked down into the myriad shades of blue and green in its depths, and in that moment it encapsulated India: an exquisite gem as the reward for 1,000 miles of heat and dust.

Essentials

Bennetts Biking Dreams was started in 2010 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the bike insurance specialist. Entry is free online at bennettsbikingdreams.co.uk.

The tour Geoff Hill took with Blazing Trails (blazingtrailstours.com) costs £3,145, including international flights. Accommodation is in small but pleasant hotels, and on two nights in fixed campsites with two-person tents. Some of his group had limited or no dirt-road experience, and while they all found the trip challenging, everyone managed.

Blazing Trails' other tours, in the rest of India, Nepal and South Africa, are mostly or completely on Tarmac. Prices start at £2,295, including flights. The company is highly recommended for its excellent local knowledge, organisation and backup, including mechanics, doctor and luggage vehicle.

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